Let us now compare the respective resources of Carthage and Rome.
Both were agricultural and mercantile cities, and nothing more; art
and science had substantially the same altogether subordinate and
altogether practical position in both, except that in this respect
Carthage had made greater progress than Rome.

But in Carthage the
moneyed interest preponderated over the landed, in Rome at this
time the landed still preponderated over the moneyed; and, while
the agriculturists of Carthage were universally large landlords
and slave-holders, in the Rome of this period the great mass of the
burgesses still tilled their fields in person. The majority of the
population in Rome held property, and was therefore conservative; the
majority in Carthage held no property, and was therefore accessible
to the gold of the rich as well as to the cry of the democrats for
reform.

In Carthage there already prevailed all that opulence which
marks powerful commercial cities, while the manners and police of Rome
still maintained at least externally the severity and frugality of
the olden times. When the ambassadors of Carthage returned from Rome,
they told their colleagues that the relations of intimacy among the
Roman senators surpassed all conception; that a single set of silver
plate sufficed for the whole senate, and had reappeared in every house
to which the envoys had been invited. The sneer is a significant
token of the difference in the economic conditions on either side.